


under slender apple-boughs

by oriflamme



Series: stand still stay silent [4]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Asexual Character, Cohabitation, Lack of Communication, M/M, No Hotakainen Is Neurotypical, Second Chapter Tone Shift, sensory issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-18 18:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20317687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: Emil is comfortable to live with, considering how high-strung he acts.





	1. Chapter 1

Emil is comfortable to live with, considering how high-strung he acts.

When they first arrive at the base, they're assigned to share a room together and Emil airs his grievances on the subject to anyone in earshot. Lalli lets the Swedish roll over him, for the most part; Emil likes to complain about things and doesn't require much input from Lalli's end when he hits his stride. He's fussy about the mattress and blankets and the soap and the food and their new uniforms. At one point he tracks down and corners the quartermaster herself and complains, officious and offended when she gives him a flat no.

("Not that I am opposed to rooming with you, Lalli," Emil hurries to add, halfway through his latest tirade. "That is fine. It's the _principle _of the thing.")

Usually he has a minor point. But the itchiness of the sheets and the sterile, acrid soap smell are just things that Lalli deals with using his own methods: kicking the offending blankets to the edge of the bed, camping out underneath it when the tall bedframe leaves him feeling too exposed, and wrinkling his nose through the showers with the knowledge that in ten minutes they'll be outside in the cool autumn air and everything will smell like damp leaves and earth and woodsmoke anyway. If he doesn't like the food, he eats bread. He avoids what he absolutely needs to, puts up with what he has to. Keuruu was the same: military bases have to be pragmatic. On the edge of the silent world, they don't have the luxury or the funds to make provisions for personal issues. It's not worth the effort of saying anything.

Yet somehow Emil glides in one day with a neat stack of laundry as tall as his head, perfectly pleased with himself, and dumps a pile directly on top of Lalli's head. "You like those better, trust me," Emil says after Lalli fights his way free. He makes his own bed to his meticulous standards, which involves a lot of flapping and rearranging, and ignoring Lalli's accusatory squint. 

But he's right. When Lalli stops sulking and suspiciously inspects the new additions, they are better. Some lighter, some warmer, some with different textures. Emil pays attention to strange things. Lalli burrows under them all the first night, then kicks the old ones off onto the floor to be forgotten. Emil takes the old sheets back to the quartermaster with his nose up in the air after one of his frenzied attempts to tidy the room for appearances' sake, and they're never offered any again. 

(Lalli forgets sometimes that they got paid for their expedition to the scary foreign country, and that money, in Emil's words, can be exchanged for goods and services. There wasn't much of anything to spend a stipend on in Keuruu, and he doesn't need much now. The thought never occurs to him.)

The blankets that Emil got for himself - imported from some Icelandic place, with wool that reminds Lalli ominously of Reynir's house - aren't quite as good, when Lalli starts crawling in with him at night. Emil just blinks the first time, says, "Okay?" and lets Lalli make himself comfortable. After a week of Lalli alternately stealing the blankets or kicking them off in disinterest, Emil brings Lalli's bedding over and invests way too much time on a lecture that boils down to them splitting the bed in half. Lalli shrugs at the end - it doesn't make a difference to him - and lies down on top of the covers for the night. Emil tucks himself in primly on his back and falls asleep with a self-satisfied smile. 

It doesn't make Lalli any less of a restless sleeper. In Keuruu others rarely stayed with him through a sleep shift after realizing just how varied Lalli's response was to sleeping in close proximity from day to day. He sprawls out on his belly, curls onto his side, twitches in dreams, drags the blankets down onto the floor, steals out to sleep on his own bed when some combination of temperature and texture and the presence of someone else is too much for the night. Emil is warm; Lalli might start out in a clear space on his side but flop on top of Emil halfway through, strategically tuck his head under Emil's chin, and doze back off. If he snuggles against Emil, Emil might throw an arm over him or hug his neck and start snoring, and depending on how he feels Lalli either melts or has to squirm his way free.

Emil doesn't seem to mind. A few times he wakes up when Lalli's boney elbows or knees dig in somewhere, and hisses, "Ow - Lalli, go to _sleep - _" before he rolls over with a huff or a pout. But he never kicks Lalli out. Occasionally, when Lalli wakes up from a bad run of dreams shaking like he's run another full patrol, Emil will already have his hand threaded through Lalli's hair, patting him with bleary, half-asleep determination. Lalli rolls over on sleepless nights to stare, and finds Emil already watching him with a steady, contemplative stare in return. "Good night, Lalli," Emil mumbles, whenever Lalli twines around into a new position, and sometimes he even manages it in Finnish without switching to Swedish halfway through.

It's good. It's warm and comfortable. The more Lalli adjusts to sleeping with another person, the more secure it feels, and Emil already feels like home. Emil shuffles through five different kinds of weird hair-soap from Sweden before settling on one that strikes a balance between making his hair soft and making Lalli sneeze. Lalli's still not sure why Emil needs his hair to smell like apples on top of making it clean, but then he starts stealing it after Emil's done in the shower, because not all of Emil's fussy ideas are bad. Emil gives him a weird look when he automatically goes to fix Lalli's hair for him the next day at breakfast. Then he starts arranging Lalli's hair even more vigorously than usual, ostentatiously chattering about Lalli _obviously_ having good taste, and keeps going right up until Lalli escapes through the gate to go out on patrol for the day. There's a larger tub of hair-soap in the next month's supply shipment.

Five months after crawling into bed with him, Lalli isn't sure how to proceed. With other scouts, the ones whose schedules lined up with his own and who were usually pragmatic about that sort of thing, they rarely needed a lot of talk to sort things out. It was something to do, generally good even though it was messy, and everyone involved could be relied on to be quiet. If you weren't interested - Lalli usually wasn't - you just walked away. Sometimes there was trouble - ones who got weirdly uptight about Lalli leaving to go to his own bed after, ones who kissed with too much tongue, ones who didn't react fast enough to Lalli pulling away in discomfort and got an elbow in the ribs and a hiss for pushing it. Lalli would stop going to bed with them and after a month it would be over and done with.

But Emil - doesn't. Lalli half-expects it, the first few times Emil rolls over and drapes an arm over Lalli's back. But Emil merely sleeps on, contented, blissfully unaware of the weird ways his hair starts to rumple and stick up at the back. Lalli stays awake for a while afterward, uncertain and waiting, but nothing happens. Emil doesn't seem to mind that Lalli keeps coming back and pressing close; he just sleeps like the dead. His smile is still fond in the mornings. Nothing seems to be wrong, he doesn't seem uninterested in Lalli being there - Lalli just can't puzzle out what Emil is waiting for. If he's waiting for anything at all. If Lalli's supposed to be doing something else entirely.

Swedish people are unnecessarily complicated, even compared to most foreigners.

He observes for a while before attempting. He squints at Emil intently over breakfast. Emil disregards it for a while - there's a standard amount of staring that's normal between the two of them. Then, as the scrutiny drags on, he self-consciously smooths down his hair and weakly offers to get Lalli more porridge if he really wants some. When Lalli doesn't respond, Emil shrugs and stands up anyway. He keeps glancing over his shoulder as Lalli stares holes in the back of his shirt. 

It's not working.

"What's up with him?" Lalli hears Sigrun ask, after he yanks his hood up and stalks away from them. 

"It's not just me imagining it?!" Emil bursts out.

Of the people in the base who aren't strangers, Lalli doesn't trust anyone except Onni to give him useful advice. The last time he consulted Onni on something similar, Onni stared off into the distance distraught for a solid hour, ignoring Tuuri as she waved a hand in front of his face, and finally declared that he had no experience in the matter. That didn't stop him from cornering the next few scouts Lalli went home with and demanding to know what their intentions were, so Lalli filed it away for later that Onni got way too worked up about these things. "Yeah, that's pretty typical Onni," Tuuri had said, with a sage nod, and that was that. Some were so intimidated that they requested field station transfers to escape.

Maybe before Saimaa Lalli wouldn't have minded if Emil left. Maybe further back than that. Now, it would be…not good. Not fine. Emil's already on thin ice with Onni over the weird dream-sharing that no one understands. So. Not a good plan. Unfortunately, Reynir is stupid, Mikkel is dangerous, and Sigrun thinks that Mikkel is hilarious. The cat, of course, is useless.

After a few restive, tetchy nights glaring at Emil from the refuge under his own bed, Lalli gives up, dumps his blankets back on top of Emil, and rearranges them in a sulk as Emil flails around and gets tangled up.

He can improvise. Adapt. It's not hard; it just requires a change in approach that Lalli rarely see the point of. Apathy is a powerful thing. 

Before the next patrol Lalli circles around Emil three times, considering, then steps in to kiss the side of his face. Emil tries to turn like Lalli kept going in a circle, so it lands mostly under his ear. Emil flushes as he whips back around, stuttering as he slaps his neck with his hand as the red creeps down. Lalli needs to clear his throat twice and point at his own cheek emphatically before Emil snaps out of it. "Oh, yes. Of course!" he stammers. Face still burning, Emil primly pushes his hair back into place before kissing Lalli on the cheek. With that settled, Lalli darts off to the gate. Emil shuffles out with his hand over his mouth and his eyes mostly shut, still flushed in the face as Sigrun grins and slings an arm around his neck to keep him from shuffling into a wall. Lalli can understand her fairly well by now, but ignores them. 

After a few more stutters Emil catches on, trading kisses before splitting off to work and when Lalli reports back in. Sometimes he takes Lalli's pointing too literally, which leads to strangeness like him neatly kissing Lalli's nose. But it's interesting to dart in and kiss Emil's temple or his ear when he's off guard, or rest his chin on Emil's shoulder like normal and listen to Emil splutter and lose track of whatever he was trying to string together in Finnish at the time. He kisses the top of Emil's head when he's fixing it in front of the mirror for the day, which is more random kissing than he's ever invested effort in before, but soon it's habit. At least he doesn't have to worry about Emil kissing too much or too hard on bad days; Emil caught on early, studying Lalli through their expedition, and even when he messes up he takes a step back and reevaluates like it's something he taught himself to do, deliberately. "Things have to be a certain way. Perfectly acceptable," he said once. They're each particular in their own ways.

Still. Lalli rolls over after they've settled in for the night, and Emil is always perfunctorily tucked in, his head cushioned on the pillow. 

Frowning, Lalli pulls up the edge of Emil's blankets and lays down with his chin on Emil's chest. Tentatively, he finds Emil's waist and presses his fingers against the skin. 

Emil twitches and jerks upright. Which is not the expected response. "Helvetes jävlar, Lalli, why are your hands so _cold_?!" he hisses, aggrieved. When Lalli just stares blankly, Emil grumbles and squeezes Lalli's hands between his own. "If you must leech body heat to survive, by all means, but what kind of paltry gloves are they giving you all for winter? This is a travesty. You need to start drinking hot drinks before bed -" and then he's off on one of his weird tangents, and Lalli finds himself stumped again as Emil doesn't indicate one way or another whether he wanted Lalli's hands there at all. 

It's not that it's urgent, or even necessary. Lalli just can't puzzle out whether he's missed a step or not, and it's exasperating. The stubborn part of his brain won't let it go; if he can't figure this out, his pride is on the line. Emil appears completely unfazed by any kind of inner turmoil whatsoever and blithely carries on without catching on to Lalli's. Emil loftily produces a new pair of gloves a week later; Lalli can't use them in the field because they're too thick for scout work, but they're soft enough that he winds up curled up with them on in the evenings, under long sweaters with sleeves that hang over his hands.

He can almost hear Tuuri now, telling him to just use his words. Their shared mix of Finnish and Swedish still has gaps wide enough to make Lalli wary. Ask in dreams, for the extra assurance of understanding - but Emil tends to be distracted and less lucid than a mage in dreams. The more Lalli considers it, the more reluctant he is. If he loses this, now, it will hurt. Emil gets offended by weird things, but the offense usually doesn't last long. 

He throws back the sheets entirely and lays down completely on top of Emil, straddles his hips, and makes direct eye contact at point blank range.

Emil blinks. He pats the top of Lalli's head. "Ah. Good night, again."

Lalli shakes his head vigorously, and kisses Emil on the mouth. It's soft and warm and dry, which is perfect; Emil kisses back after another blink, which is better. His hands lay back on either side where they fell when Lalli shook his head. Even when Lalli grabs one and squeezes it experimentally, Emil's other hand just hovers uncertainly over Lalli's side. The way it does when he's not sure whether Lalli can handle contact mid-shutdown. As if Lalli isn't pressed up against him already.

This is already way more complicated than it needs to be. If they can't settle this, Lalli is going to twitch right out of his skin. Lalli pulls away without breaking eye contact and waits. "Yes?" he prompts, impatiently.

"Soo, we do this now?" Emil says, slowly. His face is very pink as he gazes up at Lalli, wistful. He's apparently too dazed to fix the strand of hair that fell into his face. Lalli fixes it for him. That seems to snap him out of his daze. "I mean - yes! This is good."

Which helps clarify some things, but not others. Lalli rucks up his shirt and splays his hand out low on Emil's soft stomach. Then waits. "_Yes_? Or no?" he says, slowly. 

His hands aren't cold. He made sure. Emil still freezes up, rigid. His face goes so red as he stammers that Lalli finally takes pity and moves his hand away, tugging Emil's shirt down. "N-no?" Emil bursts out at last. He clutches his face, looking stricken at what he just said. He starts babbling; Lalli squints against the tide as the rapid-fire Swedish starts to move too fast for him to follow. While Emil gets it out of his system, Lalli swings over the side of the bed to scoop the sheets back up. "Oh, _fuck_, I'm making it worse aren't I. I'm sorry, don't go, I just -" 

A spluttering, flustered surge of words follows, where Lalli can barely pick anything out at all. He pops back upright and starts arranging the sheets in a better nest. He needs more between Emil and the wall, if they're going to be comfortable tonight. He tosses the ones that won't work onto the floor with a sniff. Emil's mouth just keeps going; Lalli keeps his expression open and blank while Emil runs his course. He tries to switch to Finnish, but it goes about as well as the Swedish with how badly he trips over it when he's upset. "I like you. I like being with you? Is that even the conversation we're having?! I can - if you want - oh no -"

Lalli fans a blanket out on top of him and tucks the ends under Emil's legs. "You don't want sex," he says. This is much simpler than he thought; Emil just made it come across as harder than it was. Being able to sleep together without planning around potential mess after is almost ideal. Now that it's settled, Lalli's brain can stop nagging about it. 

Meanwhile, Emil appears to be in the throes of deeply exaggerated suffering. He folds his arms tight over his chest, hands tucked under. "I don't know?! I mostly just - skipped that sort of thing. In school. It never seemed relevant, I never thought it would actually come up in daily life! Accounts of its applicability seemed _highly _exaggerated, quite frankly -"

Lalli tips his head to the side and closes his eyes. "Alright. Makes sense. I can tell." 

He finishes tamping down one of his blankets underneath him, and kneads one of the itchier ones into the gap between the bed frame and the wall. By the time it's all assembled, Emil winds down from his tirade and just watches Lalli, his brows knitted with faint worry. Lalli stretches his arms out in front of him and then curls up, head on Emil's chest. Their legs require some adjustment, but after that it's fine. After further consideration, Lalli flings one more blanket over both of them, wraps an arm around Emil's waist, and closes his eyes. 

Emil's still trying to do the hesitant hover hand thing with his arm. Lalli can tell. Even when he's trying to be subtle, Emil hovers with intent. "Is this - good? Am I doing it right? Do you need something else?" Emil asks, apprehensively.

"Mrr." Lalli tugs Emil's hand down and pats it into place. Then Lalli's free to relax, boneless and limp. Even under the blanket his nose feels cold; he presses it into the crook of Emil's neck. "Mine."

That seems to be enough. "Good night, Lalli," Emil says, relieved, and Lalli can sleep.

As an afterthought, he wriggles cold feet under the blanket wrapped around Emil's legs.

Emil sighs in defeat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. The entire point of all that Lalli set up.
> 
> Stupid ace Emil, in all his deeply confused glory.
> 
> Remember who we're dealing with here.

When he was young, Emil was allowed to set his own curriculum with private tutors.

(His father only wanted to hear good things. He was far too busy for anything else. Any tutors who might undermine that tended to find themselves quickly shown the door. Any upset on Emil's part was quickly soothed with a cake.)

Said curriculum skimmed over some subjects, as a consequence. When something got too boring or too needlessly complicated, they dropped it and moved on to something more entertaining.

As such, there are sometimes…gaps. Emil didn't know what would be relevant or important when he grew up and took his place in the family business – dear Father's work seemed to be important, and vague, and endless – but it would all work out. If you didn't want to deal with something boring or bothersome, well, that was what you hired _other_ people for. Like caring for children. It was practically a Västerström tradition.

(Even now, Emil isn't entirely sure why. He could spend hours entertaining and reading to Siv and Torbjörn's three, taking them on walks and blithely making up more exciting stories to go along with the pictures in the historical societies and parks. It was certainly more fulfilling than wasting his time in arguments with the public school over his rejected credits, test scores, and grades.

"You're so good with them," Siv sighed gustily the first time Emil hobbled through the kitchen with all three pretending to gnaw on his leg. As though it was a massive relief. So long as Emil helped wrangle the kids while staying over at their house, Torbjörn made fewer noises about Emil finding an actual job.

They were certainly a handful. Emil gets the impression that for Siv and Torbjörn, three children late in their marriage were quite fine and easy to manage right up until they could no longer afford nannies. For his father, one was already one too many.)

Regardless. Sex education was one such subject. One of the tutors – sterner and perhaps more aghast at the state of Emil's education than was really polite – managed to give Emil a rudimentary overview on the basic mechanics of life when he was twelve or so. She was also one of the ones who tried to inflict a more standardized school curriculum on him, and thus had to chuck the relevant textbook at Emil's head as she was gently fired and escorted out the door. He flipped through it to humor her one final time and found it as dull as expected. Some of the bits about adolescence proved applicable, so Emil was able to weather it with a Västerström's typical unflagging fortitude and poise and absolute bare minimum of panicking.

The rest seemed to be a complete waste of time. Highly overstated, surely. It probably wasn't that common or relevant – he's not sure why _anyone _would care about it. It just sounded…unnecessary. He let the bits and mechanics involved fade into vague memory, much like the basics of algebra. He survives the crude trials and travails of public education, the cleanser unit, and multiple trips through the hellish unknown, and never once does it come up.

He's just not interested.

-

Siv has to be the one to take him aside and awkwardly inform him that his experiences are not universal. She married into the Västerström family, and she and Torbjörn chose to live in outer Mora to be closer to old city life. When they fell on hard times, they were better positioned to adapt to the abrupt change in their social strata.

"Not everything is about you," she tells him - not unkindly, at first, but with frazzled exasperation as time goes on and she repeats herself.

And still, Emil keeps finding himself blundering. "That's the only language Lalli knows," Siv says - "It's like no one is scared of an outbreak!" Tuuri says – "A lot of good people I knew died," Mikkel says - and depending on how badly Emil's put his foot in it now it's either sobering or mortifying to realize how poorly he does at internalizing that fact. At being aware of what he says, and what the consequences of some unthinking comment might be. Somewhere in a childhood catered to by nannies and private tutors, Emil can't recall a single time he interacted with someone who wasn't family or paid to act like it. None of the other well-off children he saw when they were trotted out at social events ever came over afterward.

He has to apply himself. It's an _effort _he has to exert consciously, rather than a habit like it seems to be for everyone else in the known world. If he doesn't then inevitably he winds up feeling stung and embarrassed when called on it.

It would be easy to slack off and tell himself it's not worth the effort. Easier to double down and feel unjustly attacked when the other students and later the cleansers cut around him and roll their eyes at his fumbling attempts to catch up. But he's not sure he'd be much of a person. He'd cramp back up into the rude, narrow brat who Siv and Torbjörn had to sit down and explain manners to at seventeen.

They had flowcharts.

"Just – just follow the chart," Siv begged, more than a little wild-eyed. Emil wound up losing said chart – one of the cleansers jostled his arm on purpose, laughing, and it fell into a puddle of mud – but found it came easier when he drew on it to remind Anna and Hakan and Sune about how to behave in public.

(They're still little hellions.)

He doesn't want that. Now that he's abruptly, agonizingly aware that other people_ see_ him when he makes a mess and an ass of himself, he can't exactly shut it off. Even if he backslid now, that would always be in there, a little voice eating away at him and reminding him how closed in his life is. He reached a point where he felt sick just existing in the same space as himself, and that was – a low point. Sharply at odds with the pride he defaulted to when all else failed.

So he took what he observed around him – mostly the cleansing military unit, at that point – and clumsily reshaped himself. Even if no one else in the unit really wanted much to do with him as a person, Emil could still throw himself into the general camaraderie at a good bonfire or post-demolition toast to practice and re-evaluate his new self. The arm punches were friendlier in mixed company when everyone was too sauced to pick him out of a crowd. He adapted the rough, swaggering attitude of the cleansers in the field into something a little less crude, and even if they still didn't really include _him_, Emil mastered the art of staring into the heart of an ongoing burn and artfully brooding to pass the time.

It's a work in progress. Now, somehow, he has people he likes. Sigrun's arm punches actually _are _meant in friendly high spirits. He has Lalli, who's possibly even worse at people than Emil is, and Emil thinks he would prefer to coexist with Lalli for the rest of their lives. Half the time they operate without words. There are hiccups, and understanding each other involves constant awareness and care – but it's worth it. Sometimes it's a challenge to pick apart one of Lalli's moods, but Emil thinks this is the most invested he's ever been.

("Well, er. You've overspecialized a little! But it's good that you've found your…niche?" Siv says, when Emil radios to pompously inform her of their new base and rooming situation. He assumes that she's very proud, and all that. Tone doesn't transmit very well via radio.)

Emil didn't really think about it that hard. Which is a problem, because the night before Lalli rolled over in the middle of the night and asked him about sex, and now, this morning, Emil is filled with deep foreboding. Lalli took off on patrol this morning like nothing was wrong. Usually Emil can tell when Lalli's irritated about something, but he's also very aware that Lalli can be an enigma.

…Surely Emil would have noticed if that happened before. Right? Right. He's just…having trouble remembering which bits were involved in that textbook. It was a _long _time ago, and he's literally never felt the urge to follow up on any of it, and _oh god what if he made a complete mess of it. _He never thought it would be relevant but apparently Lalli can and has done it before, and Emil is having a crisis. He had a tiny, totally normal moment of panic there and froze - was Lalli disappointed?

It hadn't seemed much different than how they normally spent the nights Lalli wanted to sleep in the same bed, so it probably didn't count as sex. He's at least 80% sure that the closest it actually got was Lalli's hand on his stomach.

…75% sure.

A solid 50%

Sigrun waves a hand in front of his face. "You alright in there?" she asks, tapping her fist on his arm and taking a sip of her drink.

Emil has been sitting here for a while, head on his fists, lunch untouched as he stares into the middle ground. "I'm not sure whether Lalli and I had sex for the first time last night or not," he says, distractedly.

Sigrun chokes on her drink. Across the table, Mikkel produces a napkin and dabs at his face, unfazed.

"You, uh – hrk – that hasn't happened before, then?" Sigrun coughs out, her voice weird as she pounds her chest with her fist.

Emil folds his arms over his chest, defensive. "No! I don't think so?!"

But as degrading as it is to concede there might be a gap in his great stores of knowledge, Sigrun and Mikkel are the most convenient people he has right now. And Emil is pretty desperate. He manages to hold it in for five seconds. "It seemed normal when we were about to go to sleep, but then he asked about not wanting sex, and then stayed one spot and hugged me all night!" Deeply aggrieved, Emil brandishes his hands in front of him and waits for their input.

(The significance of Lalli staying still all night long cannot be underemphasized. This is _serious_.)

Sigrun's voice still sounds weird as she struggles to get her drink down the right pipe. "He – I mean, you guys normally just lay down and go to sleep? Every night?" she asks, strangled.

This isn't helping. Emil throws up his hands. "Bah!"

Mikkel holds up a hand. His voice is grave. "Sigrun, this is a serious medical matter," he says. "This is important, Emil. At any point during the night, did you hold hands."

"Yes…?" Emil trails off when Mikkel fails to elaborate. Not like Lalli is big on handholding, but that did happen.

Mikkel closes his eyes and is silent for a long moment. Still trying to clear her throat, Sigrun takes another drink.

"I see," Mikkel says at last, staring over Emil's head for another beat. The tension, by this point, is unbearable. He sighs. "This is very serious. You may be pregnant."

Sigrun slams her hand against the table and ducks her head, choking again.

"I may be WHAT?!" Emil shrieks.

Mikkel pushes back from the bench, his expression solemn as Sigrun slides under the table. "Remain here. I will check your medical records, and fetch the necessary squirrel to test you properly," he instructs, and then walks off toward the skalds' office.

Sigrun is being absolutely no help whatsoever.

Emil clutches his face with his hands and stares out between his fingers. "…I'm not ready to be a father," he says, feeling faint.

-

The squirrel thing fills Emil with trepidation.

Thankfully, Mikkel merely holds it up beside Emil's head, and consults his readings thoughtfully. "You are most likely not pregnant," he announces at last.

This is an incredible relief. Emil's spent the past half hour too bewildered to maintain his impeccable decorum, even as the lunch crowd starts to side-eye their table. He lets his head sink down against the table and rakes his hair back with relief. Sigrun slaps him on the shoulder bracingly.

Then - horror of horrors -

"So how do you know you didn't get Lalli knocked up, too?" Sigrun wonders aloud.

Emil can physically feel his hair greying. He stares at Sigrun, mouth agape in silent horror.

Mikkel bows his head, stroking his chin. "This is true. Lalli might be similarly afflicted. There's simply no way to confirm, when it comes to the Finnish."

This can't be real. Emil whimpers. "You can seriously get pregnant just from holding hands?!" he demands. Then, a long-forgotten factoid clicks in his mind; Emil seizes it like a lifeline. "Wait, hang on. I distinctly remember – isn't it women who get pregnant! I'm very sure about the hand thing -"

Mikkel gently rests a hand on his shoulder. "That is not a hard and fast rule."

Sigrun appears to be sobbing into her hands, palm over her mouth.

As well she should. This is a travesty.

-

Lalli takes one look at their table - Emil haggard, Mikkel solemn, Sigrun in tears - narrows his eyes, turns around, and walks right back out the front gate without stopping.

-

That night, Emil has no idea how to approach the subject.

"Lalli, did we…" he starts, and then stops. Lalli shoots him a quizzical blink in the middle of fighting his pillow into some arcane, acceptable configuration, and Emil's mouth goes dry. "Are you happy?" he asks instead, which is almost _more _embarrassing. He did not mean it to come out as plaintive as it does. Eye contact abruptly becomes too hard to maintain; Emil glances down and away. The pattern of his coverlet never seemed so interesting.

When it must become clear that Emil can't continue, overcome with some unspeakable emotion, Lalli shrugs.

But before he goes back to his arrangement, he stoops and drops a matter-of-fact kiss on top of Emil's head. Emil feels his face flush. Not even a midlife crisis at twenty, almost certain to turn his hair a shameful grey, can stop the pleased smile on his face.

It makes the more unfortunate question easier to ask. He hurries it along. "And – you would tell me if you were pregnant, right?" Emil says, anxiously. "I promise I'm very good with children. I have references."

Lalli stares at him, expression flat, for a long minute. Then he mashes up the sheets in his hand into a ball and dumps them on Emil's face. "Don't be weird," he orders, flatly, and proceeds to align his spine with Emil's side, using Emil's arm as a pillow. He has arranged all the blankets in a rumpled circle around himself, leaving his actual body uncovered except for his feet.

In many respects, Emil is proud to consider himself an expert in interpreting Lalli. This blanket composition is a new one, though. When Emil makes the bed in the mornings, it's so that it looks neat and no one who casually walks in thinks they're slovenly. When Lalli arranges it at night, it's based on any number of random factors that change from day to day. Lalli always looks on the edge of being too thin in the thermal shirt, his muscles wiry and his rib cage present despite all Emil's efforts to get more of what Lalli likes and tolerates on the day to day mess hall spread.

He feels the need to clarify. Once Lalli settles in to sleep, rousing him only makes him irritable. "Are we…having sex? Because I mean, if you need -"

Lalli reaches back without looking and pats Emil's face. He mostly gets a handful of nose. "No. You don't want to," he says, like that makes the answer obvious.

Which it does, really. Lalli means what he says, always.

Emil can't call the warmth in his chest just relief. It feels too tender for that. "Oh. Thank you," he says, turning his head slightly. It means burying his smile in Lalli's hair, which is ideal at the moment, and will almost certainly end with hair tickling his nose at two in the morning. "Good night, Lalli."

"Mnnh." Lalli stretches his arms out in front of him, then relaxes. "Good night."

-

_Without proper treatment, face-bruises often turn into 'face-cancer,'_ Mikkel had said.

_I made that up, _Mikkel had said_._

Emil cracks an eye open in the middle of the night and squints darkly up at the ceiling.

…Emil is not a clever man.

-

"This is face-cancer again, isn't it," Emil says. He jabs an accusing finger right in the center of Mikkel's head.

It isn't a question.

Mikkel smiles ruefully. "Two young men of your particular configuration cannot, in fact, get pregnant," he agrees, without batting an eye.

Sigrun just shakes her head as she swirls her cup of water, her smile lopsided but apologetic. Vaguely.

They're lucky Emil is a such princely and forgiving person. Emil folds his arms and huffs as he sits down hard beside Sigrun, fuming. "It's not funny! And we're not having sex, anyway. So there," he says. He pointedly turns up his nose at his plate when Mikkel starts filling it for him, like he's done nothing wrong.

"I am very happy for you. So long as you find your romantic relationship fulfilling and full of joy, that is a perfectly viable option. If you do, however, please remember to use protection," Mikkel says.

Emil isn't falling for that one. If Mikkel thinks Emil will give him an opening to pull another fast one, he can think _again_.

A chin thumps on top of Emil's head. He glances up, and Lalli glances down, his pale eyes already wide awake as he rests his head. His arms hang loose over Emil's shoulders.

Well. At least Mikkel is tolerable, when he's not attempting to give Emil a heart attack with his jokes. Emil shoots him one last glare, but scoots the plate toward himself. "Hmph." He turns his attention to Lalli, ignoring the other two as he pushes parts Lalli will like off onto a smaller plate. "Good morning, Lalli," he says, primly, and holds up the new plate on his palm as an offering.

Lalli buries his face in Emil's hair. Still not all the way awake yet, then. "Mrr."

-

Sigrun hauls Emil aside afterward. "Come on. We will have a chat, warrior to warrior, so that something like this never happens again," she offers, good naturedly, which is a Sigrun kind of apology. Not the type of formal affair that Emil learned from birth, but friendly. This isn't Norway (though some of the base's missions take them there), but Sigrun treats Emil like they're there. She doesn't blame him for not knowing things that should be basic. The way she shows him the ropes without hanging him out to dry is infinitely easier to deal with than any of Emil's other teachers and captains in the military.

"That would be – appreciated," he admits, with a sigh.

"How hard can it be?" Sigrun adds.

Unfortunately, Sigrun has a lot more enthusiasm than she does focus, sometimes.

Emil raises his hand to stop her mid-gesture, a very vivid and horrifying twenty minutes later. "Question. Are you describing sex or a troll fight?"

Sigrun glances down at where she's punching her fist into her palm.

Then she looks back up, put out. "…Y'know, I kinda lost track there," she admits. "Strike that one, kid. _But as I was saying -_"

Emil launches up out of his seat and produces his best, most snobbish look of sober thanks. "Thank you so much Sigrun. You are an excellent teacher. I have learned so much," he declares, resting a hand formally on her shoulder.

Sigrun slugs him in the shoulder with a cheerful grin. "Obviously!" 

-

Things have mostly cleared up by evening. Emil paces the perimeter wall to pass the time, waiting for Lalli to get back. The sun is sinking low on the horizon, but not yet out of sight.

When the wind picks up, he grumbles and smooths his hair back into place. He doesn't pay much attention to it. He scuffs his foot along the dirt track, kicking a pebble along ahead of him.

A thunderous voice booms from above. Almost, Emil is sure, literally. "**You there. Emil**."

Emil covers his head instinctively. "Uh. Va?" he asks, peeking up at the top of the wall.

Onni glares down at him from the battlements, hood up to shadow his face. Emil doesn't think Finnish mages throw random frivolous magic around, but Lalli's cousin does a terrifying impression of a looming storm cloud.

They've circled around each other ever since Saimaa; Emil has muddled memories of getting batted out of Lalli's dreams a few times by an incredibly irate owl before the Hotakainens had a stern discussion in rapid Finnish that absolutely no one could follow, and the weird shared dreams resumed. Onni frowns at Emil disapprovingly from across the room, Emil makes his escape with Sigrun and the others before he can be cornered, and so they've coexisted in harmony.

Apparently, his grace period just ran out.

"Tell me. When do you intend to make an honest man out of my cousin?" Onni demands, his hood and hair tossing in a breeze that is far too wild for a clear sky.

Emil opens his mouth, and what comes out in broken Finnish is, "- _Oh god is he really pregnant?!_"

For a fraction of a second, they gape at each other in blank, mutual incomprehension. Onni looks kind of like a kitten sucker punched him in the gut. It's the look of a man questioning everything he's ever known. Emil breaks eye contact to side-eye the dirt and wonder how long it would take for him to bury himself – answer: too long - and that snaps Onni out of it. "He'd – _better not be_?!" Onni yells back. He glances around, apparently just as desperate as Emil for a way to comprehend what just happened. "What is this utter nonsense. You -"

Then Onni's eyes light on something over Emil's head. Realization dawns. "Of course. I've seen you speaking with him often. I should have known. There's only one person who could originate a strike I never saw coming." Onni points. "You! Why on earth did you tell this stupid man Lalli could get pregnant?!"

Mikkel, by the door to the decontamination gatehouse, doesn't even blink. "Naturally, I cannot break patient confidentiality, but my sincerest congratulations. We are all very happy for them," he replies, shooting them a thumbs up.

Lalli emerges from the gate at the same time. He blinks at Mikkel, then follows his line of sight to Emil and Onni on the wall.

Onni's voice cracks. "**_What_**." 

Lalli pivots on a heel and books it right back out the gate.

Onni bolts after him, boots pounding along the wall. "Lalli? Lalli, get back here!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mikkel, internally: This impressionable young man has come to me in a time of deep turmoil and changes, and placed his trust in me. I will never have this kind of opportunity again.
> 
> ...I gotta fuck with him.


End file.
